Kate flew back to Brigham Young University the next week. Jeff continued to work long hours, as his mother’s health continued to deteriorate. Within the year, his mother died in her sleep, as the doctors told him that she had a weakened heart for years.

Jeff didn’t agree with the doctors, but respected their theories. He believed differently, since he had witnessed it himself. His mother had literally died in her sleep from a broken heart.

I think one of the hardest things in life is leaving your child behind to begin a new life.

As mothers, we live and breathe our children. We nurture and protect them as infants, watching them as they take their first steps, walking them to their classroom in Kindergarten, going to their graduations, the prom, drivers’ education and watching them as they start their new lives at a University.

It seems as if life goes by in an instant. We know they are going to grow up, but time seems to speed up and they are grown before our very eyes. We are happy for them to start their new lives, but it is a bittersweet occasion. We spend eighteen years of our lives with them and in an instant, they are gone.

Can we really prepare ourselves for this? It has been six months now and I still wonder around the house, lost. Where did the years go? I ask myself this daily.